Charged colloidal particles may form fluid, crystalline or glassy phases even at low packing fraction, if the experimentally adjustable repulsion becomes sufficiently strong. Here we report a comprehensive overview of the characterisation of charged colloidal solids, formed by thoroughly deionised suspensions. A description of the used experimental methods like Bragg microscopy, static and dynamic light scattering, torsional resonance spectroscopy and conductometry is given. For demonstration, these methods are applied to a suspension of polystyrene spherical charged colloids with 68 nm diameter to investigate our system in terms of conductivity, structure, shear modulus, fluid-solid phase transition, crystal growth and nucleation.